Last Ape Standing Featured Book at the Chautauqua Institution

The prestigious Chautauqua Institution has chosen the books that it will feature in its 2013 summer program. We are very honored to announce that Last Ape Standing is among them.

Only a handful of books each year are chosen for this program, and we hope you’ll consider attending when Chip talks June 27. The experience of visiting Chautauqua alone is worth the experience.

If you have never been to Chautauqua, it is truly a wonderful and unique place with a fascinating history, a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, and recreational activities. Over the course of nine weeks, more than 100,000 visitors will stay at Chautauqua and participate in programs, classes and community events for all ages—all within the beautiful setting of a historic lakeside village.

A visit there is like stepping back in time 100 years. It boasts its own hotel, small neighborhood of Victorian homes, restaurants, even a town square. To learn more visit: http://www.ciweb.org.

Here is a rundown of the books, and their authors, being featured along with Last Ape Standing. “It’s very heady company,” says Chip. “I am so honored to be included.”

Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived
Chip Walter • 3:30 p.m. Thursday, June 27 — Hall of Philosophy

Over the past 180 years scientists have discovered evidence that at least 27 species of humans evolved on planet Earth. What enabled us to survive when all the others were shown the evolutionary door? In Last Ape Standing, Chip Walter tells the intriguing tale of how against all odds and despite nature’s capricious ways we stand here today, the planet’s most dominant species.

At age 19, Hugh Martin withdrew from college for deployment to Iraq. After training at Fort Bragg, he spent 11 months in Iraq as the driver of his platoon sergeant’s Humvee. The poems in The Stick Soldiers, Martin’s Poulin Prize-winning debut collection, recount his time in basic training, his preparation for Iraq, his experience withdrawing from school, and ultimately, the final journey to Iraq and back home to Ohio.

Set in modern-day Louisiana, on a sprawling antebellum plantation where the past and the present coexist uneasily, The Cutting Season is at once a high-octane page-turner and thoughtful meditation on how America reckons its past with its future. With her rare gift for depicting human nature in all its complexities, Attica Locke demonstrates once again that she is “destined for literary stardom.”

In the world of the near future, Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead — meaning she has little freedom, cannot learn to read, and is valued only if capable of providing children to the Commander. Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a finalist for the 1986 Man Booker Prize, is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

The Long Walk: The Story of War and the Life that Follows
Brian Castner • 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 16 — Hall of Philosophy

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them in Iraq as the head of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. A thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book, The Long Walkalternates between two harrowing realities: the terror, excitement, and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the unshakeable fear, anxiety, and survivor guilt that he — like so many veterans — carries inside.

CLSC Young Readers adds two to 2013 book list

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
4:15 p.m. Wednesday, July 3 — Alumni Hall

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. Then he meets Ruby, a baby elephant taken from her family, and she makes Ivan see their home—and his own art—through new eyes. Katherine Applegate blends humor and poignancy to create a story of friendship, art, and hope.

Ungifted by Gordon Korman
Program date TBA — Alumni Hall

When troublemaker Donovan Curtis is accidentally sent to a special program for gifted and talented students, his teachers and fellow pupils grow to realize that he may not belong. But after an ongoing experiment with a live human (sister), an unforgettably dramatic middle-school dance, and an astonishing come-from-behind robot victory, Donovan shows that his gifts might be exactly what the gifted students never knew they needed.

Register now for 2013 Writers’ Center poetry and prose workshops

Visit the Summer Workshops page at Chautauqua’s website to review the offerings for all nine weeks of the season, including several master class options with some of the most celebrated literary stars of our time.

U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey has chosen poet Shara McCallum for a 2013 Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress.Gabriel Welsch has announced the publication of his fourth collection of poems, The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse, by Steel Toe Books.Poet John Hoppenthaler recently published Jean Valentine: This-World Company (Under Discussion), co-edited with Kazim Ali.

Children’s author Kashmira Sheth’s new picture book, Tiger in My Soup, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.Matthew Goodman’s new book,Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World, is now on sale.Kirk Nesset’s new book, Saint X, has recently been published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press.Salmon Poetry Press will publish Neil Shepard’s new book of poetry,Homind Up, in 2014.

Join us on the following dates for the remaining book chats on 2012 CLSC selections, each at 8 p.m. ET at clsc.ciweb.org